Coldharbour Lane

My father does a naming ceremony the way a port does a container ship: the same forty moves, in the same order, at the same speed, whether it is forty people or four hundred.

The eighth of the month was two hundred, in the hall on Coldharbour Lane, for the granddaughter of a woman who has been buying my father’s food since 1998, and I have worked that hall on and off since I was nine years old, and on the Sunday morning I turned up at twenty past seven with a knife roll and a man.

“This is Simon,” I said. “He’s going to do whatever you tell him.”

Tunde Adebayo looked at Simon Ashworth for about four seconds.

“Can you carry?”

“Yes.”

“Can you carry hot?”

“Yes.”

“Can you carry hot while somebody is walking backwards into you?”

“That’s the only kind I’ve ever done,” said Simon.

“Mm,”…